


Phoenix Point: Life Among Ashes

by RedStarRocket91



Category: Phoenix Point (Video Game)
Genre: Inktober 2019, Short Stories, various characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2020-11-10 16:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 15,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20854958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedStarRocket91/pseuds/RedStarRocket91
Summary: A collection of short stories set in the Phoenix Point universe, set in the years between the collapse of civilisation and the start of the game. Produced for Inktober 2019.





	1. Ring

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. Thanks for reading this.
> 
> I've always wanted to do something for Inktober, but since I have absolutely no talent for drawing or painting, this year I've decided to have a go at writing something based on the prompts instead. This is an ongoing project and I'll be writing a new entry every day for the rest of the month: don't worry, it's just this opening chapter where I'll be wasting your time with notes. I really hope you enjoy the stories.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While clearing an old building for supplies, a scavenger makes an unexpected connection.

As I take a step toward the slumped form of my attacker, rifle trained on its head, the other raises both of its chitinous hands to cover itself. Perhaps it’s the humanity of the gesture, the desire to survive rather than the heedless, feral rage so typical of these creatures which gives me pause, or perhaps it’s that brief, tantalising flash of metal halfway down a shelled finger. Whatever the reason, as I stare at the oily slime oozing from its shattered carapace and listen to the wet rasp of its ruined lungs, I realise that I can’t pull the trigger.

_ This shouldn’t be any different. _

It’s been almost three months now since I joined up with Michaels’ group, and even that wasn’t the first time I’d killed one of these things. Since then, I’ve notched twenty-eight more, including one this morning. I’ve never had trouble shooting one before, and it’s not as though there’s any option to just let them go. If you’re smart and careful you can usually avoid them, even lure them away from places you need to be, but once you’ve been seen it’s kill or be killed.

Maybe that’s why this time is different. Until now, every encounter with these creatures has been a struggle for survival, a mad scramble of claws and bullets and killing instinct. Staring down at the helpless creature before me, its trembling arms outstretched as its threat bleeds away from dozens of wounds, the hatred of desperation fades away and I find myself pitying the other. While usually I don’t see putting down the crabmen as any different to the rabid dogs we sometimes encounter, the thought of doing so here feels strangely like murder.

“You alive up there, Magpie? We heard shots.”

The drawl of Michaels’ voice is barely audible beneath the crunch of static as the old radio on my harness scratches to life. The first time she called me ‘magpie’ was also the first time I had her pistol tucked beneath my chin, having mistaken her crash site for one long forgotten and begun stripping it for parts. For the first few weeks afterward, I thought that she’d let me go because she’d realised that it was an honest need to survive rather than anything malicious, and that she would hesitate to shoot someone so young. Now, I suspect it’s more that she saw the value in having a decent mechanic tag along, and that she had more food than bullets. Though I don’t take my eyes off the dying creature, I raise a hand to my shoulder and hold down the transmit button.

“I’m fine, captain. You’ll hear one more shot in a moment, got a bleeder here, over.”

“A _ quick _ moment. We’ve got less than two hours to make it to the safehouse and Dawes reports movement on the horizon. Michaels out.”

Though one of the creature’s arms slumps to its side, the other remains outstretched, still reaching toward me. I can see the glint of metal there more clearly now - a small ring, perhaps gold, the plate pinched beneath it as though crushed in its grip. It’s with a start that I realise, the ring must have been there all along - the mutations occurring around it, yet unable to break its hold.

As the arm finally wavers and begins to fall, I kneel down, turning to what’s left of the other’s face meet the gaze of its single remaining eye, a dark iris barely distinguishable atop a milky gray orb. Though most of the muscles and skin around it have long since hardened into an armoured shell, there’s just enough moving tissue left to convey something. Not the mindless, feral anger I’ve seen in the rest of its species - intelligence? Desperation, even pleading?

I follow the other’s gaze as that eye spins back to the ring on its finger, beginning to understand. Beneath its mangled, crustacean features, beneath the chitinous carapace, there was once a person. A husband, perhaps a father. A human being with hopes and dreams, stripped down to a tool and deprived even of his own body, yet anchored by that single, precious reminder of identity. How long has he been trapped like this, I wonder? How many years has he suffered, enslaved to this sickness, helpless to do anything but cling on to his sense of self?

_ Too long. _

I carefully pull the glove from my own right hand, revealing the single, silvered ring there. The pearly eye fixes on it for a moment, and when it finally returns to meet my gaze once more, its surface is glossy, glistening wet. A lump rises in my throat as I carefully reach over with my other hand: this close, if the creature decides to attack, I won’t have time to react before it’s upon me. But the moment passes, and I tap twice atop the golden ring before scooping up my rifle once more and rising to my feet.

“I’ll look after it, I promise.”

The other continues to stare at me as I raise the rifle, its breath barely audible now. Amidst the oil and blood, a single drop of clear moisture rolls free from its eye, gleaming as it spills down the scales of the cheek. We continue to stare for a few moments more before the creature finally gives the slightest tremble of its carapace, what might be an approximation of a nod.

Michaels scowls when I return to the outside a few minutes later, jerking a thumb toward the other three figures waiting in the courtyard as she turns. “You took your time.”

“Sorry.”

“Did you at least find the parts you need?”

“Not quite, but close enough.”

“Good. At least this hasn’t been a complete waste of time.” She pauses a moment, raises an eyebrow. “That’s a nice new necklace you’ve got there. I do hope our little magpie hasn’t been wasting time searching for treasure.”

I shake my head, fingering the ring on the chain at my neck. “This was important to someone, once.”

Michaels rolls her eyes as she signals to the others to fall in behind us. “Nobody who matters any more.”


	2. Mindless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stranded in the mountains, a survivor considers his options.

Apathy is the real enemy.

Some people, of course, would say it’s the monsters. After all, they’re the reason our land and homes were smothered beneath an endless cloud of poisoned fog. They’re the reason our dwindling group of survivors don’t sleep even when they’re not on watch. They’re the reason why every year we have to strip down the rotting shelters for parts and retreat a little higher into the mountains.

So, sure, the monsters might be the ones who’re killing us.

But they’re not the reason we’re dying out.

I shiver beneath a thin, mouldering blanket as I roll over, ears straining to pick out any suspicious noise above the patter of rain on the tent’s canvas. The creaking boughs of dead trees, the whispering of the wind against the door flap, the crackling embers of a camp fire - all mundane sounds which could obscure something far more dangerous. At least the rain isn’t glowing. It only happened once, but it only needed to. Seeing what it did to those it touched was all the prompting I needed to stow a pistol beneath my bed and decide which temple to put the single bullet through if it happened again.

No, for all the threat of the beasts and the mist, the reason we’re dying out now is the same reason we were dying out four years ago: apathy. There were sixty of us back then, a dozen hardened preppers plus an assortment of those family and friends who seemed like they could contribute useful skills. You wouldn’t expect apathy from preppers, of course, and it didn’t start that way. We finished the bunker months before teotwawki, and I was damned proud of it - power, water, storage, sewerage and enough food to live inside for half a decade with proper rationing, and all the guns, knives, and medicine we’d need to protect ourselves once we came back out. Between walls wrought from an inch and a half of the finest American steel and the best CBRN shielding money could buy, the bunker was impregnable.

The mist didn’t care.

I think I knew, even at the time, that those of us who were retreated to higher ground were making a mistake. Flooded out of the bunker with the fog creeping ever further inland, pulling back above its tide made sense. Staying where we were wasn’t an option; getting above it was an easy decision. We discussed where we should go to make sure we had access to fresh water and good sightlines, which routes would give us the best opportunities to scavenge replacement supplies, even who would be most expendable, once the hard decisions needed to be made. In our apathy, we asked the easy questions, not asking the difficult one - the most important of all.

_ What if it doesn’t stop rising? _

Most of us made the lazy choice. To retreat higher: to try and wait out the end of days. A mindless, reckless decision, the same instinctive reaction as snatching a hand back from flames rather than the meticulous planning and foresight we were used to.

And so, we climbed. Forty feet at first, circling our vehicles and stripping a derelict ranger post for parts. When the mist reached that, we retreated again, another twenty feet to an old campground, and again, and again. By the time the poison tide finally halted, we were a thousand feet above the ground, trapped on an island peak in a sea of sickly clouds and bloody claws.

In the years since we encamped on this mountain, we’ve made some improvements. A haphazard barricade of rotten wood and rusting metal panels, what little we could scavenge during those weeks and months where the mist recedes heaped together to block the road and moved higher as necessary. A barricade to keep us safe, that was the idea. In reality, it just marks the furthest boundary of the prison we’ve built for ourselves.

We’ve gotten pretty good at fighting the freaks off, so that they don’t often bother us anymore - just enough to keep us alert and anxious, in a permanent state of exhaustion from lack of sleep. Those few that scuttle out from under the shadows feel like little more than scouts or reminders, just enough to probe our defences and check that we’re still fighting back. But while it’s been years since they were a threat, we can’t fight the mist that continues to creep toward us, with no option save to keep retreating ever upward. There’s no plan here, no goal except survival, clinging to whatever scraps of land remain above the taint.

The simple truth is plain to see. We can pull back whenever the fog draws too close, heading a little higher each time. But we’re already long past the halfway point of the peak, and all too soon, we’re going to run out of places to climb to.

_ We just need to hold on. It’ll stop eventually. _

The words ring in my ears as I roll over and sigh. It’s an argument we’ve had so many times now that I don’t know why I still bother trying to persuade the others, and yet it’s all I can do. They’re a stubborn lot, too fearful, too apathetic, too unwilling to face the fact that all we’re doing is running down the clock toward defeat.

I know for a fact that there are others out there - not a month ago, we picked up a broken transmission on the short-wave radio, someone talking about needing to get back to Phoenix. I wish the poor bastard the best of luck; Arizona is on the far side of the country from here in the Appalachians, and I can’t imagine how bad the mist must be across the great plains.

There are times where I’m tempted to just pick up my rifle and start walking the next times the fog recedes. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to come down from this mountain; I’d far rather try it before we’re breathing in death the whole way down.

I roll over and sigh again, wrapping the threadbare blanket more tightly around myself. No, I can’t do it alone, and in any case, I’m the last prepper here, the only person who can really keep things running. I can’t just abandon the others, no matter how much I need to track down Sam. She’s not dead, I know that much.

I just don’t know if she’s still Sam.

I close my eyes, pretending her whispers are just the wind for what must be the hundredth night in a row. We can’t stay here, but we can’t just go blundering away into the fog hoping for the best, either. We need a plan.

Soon.


	3. Bait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the mountains of New Hampshire, a hunter prepares a trap.

I miss the days where bait meant worms.

Before all this, I made a good living. Firemen aren’t exactly well paid, but it was enough to get by and the drill kept me in shape. At the weekend, once he was old enough, I’d take Joel up into the hills and we’d camp out, go fishing on the lake - a magical place back then, green trees and white peaks and the cleanest, clearest water you ever saw. I still remember the way my son grinned as he held up the first salmon he ever caught, a tiny little thing barely four inches long. In truth, he’d slopped more water into the boat than fish, but I was proud of him all the same.

Years later, we’d go hunting. We started by the lake, where I could keep him in my sight, saw him shoot his first waterfowl, his first rabbit; later, his first elk. That night, I showed him the cooler I’d snuck out and gave him his first beer. A lot of firsts up there on that lakeshore. A lot of good memories.

That’s something a father needs to do. Teach his son the value of his food. Oh, sure, there are plenty of people who’d say it’s cruel, it’s blood sport, it’s immoral, even though we eat what we shoot. People who’d hold their nose at the mere mention that their dinner came from something that was once alive, put to death to feed them. They’d rather their meals came in nice pre-packaged little boxes, all tidy and sanitary, as though if they just don’t think about it, theirs will simply spring into existence at the grocery mart.

Well, everything has a price, and it’s no different if you want to eat. Turn a blind eye, ignore it all you want, it doesn’t change the truth. A real man should face that fact, I think. Frank joined us out there once and never ate meat again. Ain’t no shame in that, deciding you can’t bear the cost of something, and I respect a man who comes to that conviction and stands by it with action far more than one who’d preach the evils of hunting at a table heaped with processed meat.

So, we were never rich, but we never went hungry. And knowing how to hunt ended up being much more useful than I’d have ever expected after the slaughterhouses became slaughtered homes.

I only wish that the prey nowadays were as easy as to kill as the ones back then.

I exhale slowly as I put down the binoculars, carefully roll the rifle into my hand and put my eye to the scope. Though years of neglect mean that the trees lining the cracked asphalt have grown unkempt and gnarled, from my position atop the gas station’s forecourt I have a good view of the winding road down to the lake below, to the crossroads where I’ve baited the trap.

It isn’t long before the two figures round the bend on the approach to the crossing, their bodies still murky and indistinct against the gloom of the evening as they lumber from the shadows. Even at this distance, I can see they’re both armoured, and as they pass beneath a break in the canopy I can briefly make out that each is armed with a long, vicious-looking blade. Though the weapons are held ready neither of the targets looks particularly alert, both hunched forward against the cool of the evening as they trudge toward the crossing rather than scanning the road ahead or the forest to either side. Indeed, they’re so close to the trap by the time they spot the flag fluttering in the spring breeze that my finger has already moved to the trigger and I’m debating whether or not to just take the first shot.

One of them finally raises their head, an arm outstretched to point toward the pile at the base of the flag a moment later. They turn to face each other, just for a moment, before they begin shuffling toward it. I weren’t staying as still as I could, I’d shake my head. It’s such an obvious trap, even crabmen shouldn’t really fall for it, yet these two have thrown themselves into it without so much as a sideward glance.

I watch the flag as they reach the heap in the middle of the crossroad, waiting for a lull in the gusting wind. Between the carcass I dragged there this morning, the medical skeleton I draped in ragged clothing and propped up on the rucksack filled with the shiniest items I’ve hoarded, and the brightest spent brass I buffed up and scattered around, there’s certainly no way they could pass it up, and they obligingly squat down, the first beginning to sift through the bag while the other pats the pockets of the skeleton.

The flag drops, and I squeeze the trigger. 

I curse inwardly as the target falls and I cycle the bolt, the air suddenly filled with a screech of agony as the bullet strikes just a little too low. I’d been aiming for the throat, just above the ridge of the chestpiece, but instead the round pings off the very rim of the armour and shatters the collarbone.

The second shot is cleaner. The other target stands, whips around in panic with blade raised, and crumples backward a moment later as this bullet finds an eye socket. The screaming of the first target only intensifies as the second strikes the ground, but I don’t move to deal with the survivor just yet. I let a minute pass first, making sure there are no others, before vaulting over the side of my perch and shimmying down to the ground.

The survivor has managed to crawl a short distance into the forest by the time I arrive, leaving a bloody smear on the ground which would lead me straight there even without the rustling of the foliage. I draw my knife as I approach, carefully kick the machete out of her hand as I roll the woman over.

“Why?” The question is wheezed through a mouthful of blood, her cheeks as bright and wet as her eyes. I caress her face as I pull her upward, ignoring the hands which beat weakly against my chest.

“I’m so sorry it had to be you. But a man has to provide for his family.”

I draw the knife across her throat quickly, hold her until she dies. I’m not a sadist, you understand. I don’t take pleasure in this. But a man should have the courage to do his own killing, to carry the guilty consequences of that with him and face it head-on.

Besides, it’s not as though the meat will go to waste.

I strip the bodies and their baggage for anything useful before I fetch the sled, looking for tools, food, ammunition, anything bright and likely to catch the eye. No doubt you’re wondering if it’s a trophy, some sick souvenir of the kill, but the answer is far more mundane. As I toss the woman’s earrings into the bag along with her companion’s watch and the hundreds of other trinkets already within, I bow my head to all those who provided its contents. One man’s treasure is another man’s guilty reminder.

And that man’s guilty reminder is another victim’s bait.


	4. Freeze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A trio of volunteers work to keep a shelter roof from collapsing amid the harsh Russian winter.

“Dmitriy! Dmitriy, come on, stay with me!”

Stepan’s words are dull, almost lost amidst the blizzard. It’s as though the whole world has fallen quiet, the starless night swallowing any attempt to shatter the peace. Despite the rage of the wind, the frozen death which swirls around us does so in silence, a dead sound for dead men. The air is vicious as it tears against every scrap of my exposed flesh, even ripping through the thinner layers of clothing in places to tear at the flesh beneath, and where it clamps its icy jaws it draws not blood but heat.

Not that the distinction will matter, soon enough.

It takes me a few moments to realise that Stepan is tugging at my arm, his hand fastened firmly around my bicep as he tries to drag me off my knees and back to my feet. I have little strength to obey, but even less to resist. After a few moments of waiting in the hopes that he’ll simply give up and leave me to die in peace, I push myself upright once more, grasping the shovel tightly in numb hands.

“Come on, Dmitriy, just a few more minutes and we can go back down. Olya’s waiting for you, eh? But we have to keep the roof clear.”

My eyes are slow to focus on Stepan’s face, his features inky and shapeless against the midnight darkness. No, worse even than that, I realise - it’s not simply the lack of light which is masking his features, but the chill bite of the wind itself. What little of his flesh is exposed has blackened, its life ripped away by the cold.

Even beneath all the swaddling layers which stiffen his movements, I know the rest of his body looks the same. I don’t need to see this to know it, because I can feel it in my own body - or, more accurately, can’t feel it. The burning agony of skin frozen solid has long since numbed to nothing, replaced with a quiet ache and the need to rest, just long enough to get my breath back. I know Stepan feels this too, as surely as Yarik felt it in the moments before he stumbled and fell off the rear side of the thin roof of the shelter.

We didn’t go after him. We already knew what we’d find. And if we’d been wrong - it was a mercy, not a cruelty.

Stepan wraps an arm around my shoulders and taps his forehead to mine before stepping away, the intimacy of the gesture all the more important in the absence of sensation. Slowly, I raise the shovel once more, and begin scraping it along the roof of the shelter to scoop the snow off the sides. I curse inwardly as the blade scratches over a patch of ice which has already hardened - there’s no removing that tonight. The anger rekindles some determination in my heart, and I renew the task with the last of my vigour.

It was madness to come here, and everyone knew it. No matter how well prepared you are, you don’t come this far north unless you’re desperate. But then, we’re desperate folk in a world gone mad. With every year, the mists roll a little further north, devour a little more of the warm and habitable lands to the south. One by one, the cities vanished beneath the cloud, and those who’d stayed sent no further word. We tried inland, at first, tried to make a home of the steppe. It worked for a while, a city of the homeless, a place for the displaced. And just like the cities of the old world, it didn’t last. We woke up one day to beasts in our midst and poison on the horizon.

The exhaustion gets to everyone eventually: it is inevitable. For some, it was the day the world ended, as they gazed at the death of civilisation and realised they couldn’t go on. For others, it was that second refuge, the day the ocean came to the desert and they decided it couldn’t be outrun. Many more fell on the way here, their bodies left in the snow.

It was only when the winter set in that we finally stopped, as the days grew short and the world turned cold. Once the snow began to fall, we set up the shelter with what we had to hand - wood and metal scrap, even ice packed into the walls for insulation. It’s enough, at least for now, though it’s been three weeks since the thermometer climbed higher than freezing. 

The roof was always the weak point, and we knew that. A flimsy thing, built in haste and ignorance as we used our sturdiest materials to strengthen the walls in fear that the beasts would follow us even here. It’s been six hundred kilometres now since we last saw one of them, and they’ve had plenty of time to catch us while we’ve been trapped here - some of the families are saying that the cold which kills us kills them in turn, that they simply can’t survive this far below zero.

I smile at that thought. Our winter has seen off every war from the land - and it may, it seems, defeat even the oceans as well. If that’s true, and not the bitterest of hopes to be broken, then perhaps the rumours are also true. Come the spring when we finally leave this place, we’ll find that last bastion of mankind, a home beyond the ocean where we can start our lives anew.

But first, we must keep this roof clear. It was never meant to hold such weight as a man; beneath unchecked snow, it will collapse altogether, crashing down atop our hopes. We’re up here for barely fifteen minutes at a time - they say that’s enough to keep us alive, but I saw my fate the moment Yarik fell. As the bell rings to call Stepan back, I toss my shovel over the edge and sink to my knees. The rest of the winter will be hard, and the spring walk north will be even harder. When the survivors arrive, if there’s even somewhere to reach, the struggle will begin anew.

But as I stare into the blackness, I know my struggle is at an end. The exhaustion gets to everyone eventually - and I’d rather not waste what few supplies we have.

Give my love to Olya, won’t you?


	5. Build

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A survivor reflects on how she lost one home and built another

What makes a home?

Is it a place that feels comfortable? Four walls, a roof, a nice picket fence? No, that can’t be it. We had homes long before those things were an option, continue to want homes even now they’re gone.

Is it people? Being surrounded by the ones you love? That’s better, but still not right. I kept my family close through all the months we ran, and no matter how much that grotty tent began to stink it never once felt like home.

Maybe it’s safety, then. A place you can feel at ease putting your head down at night, knowing it’ll still be attached come morning. That’s closer, I think. But how easily does a prisoner sleep in solitary confinement?

No, there’s something more to it than that. It’s a feeling, a sense of belonging, not a bunch of boxes to be ticked off a list. That night, when the tide came in and never stopped rising, it wasn’t the TV that I wept for. I didn’t cry for a wardrobe full of fine clothes, or the expensive chandeliers.

When they finally came, as we gazed into the pearly murk from atop the foothills of the Alps, my tears were for the flowers I knew would begin to wither in the garden. For the drowsy mornings next to my husband as we’d awaken and embrace in the light and warmth of the rising sun. For my children’s scribbles on the refrigerator, worthless and priceless in equal measure.

I don’t know how long we sat and watched as the ocean swallowed Sanremo. The moon was so clear that night, as bright and cold as dawn over ice, drowning the world in crystalline light. The way the buildings sparkled, gleaming with all the beauty of God, I couldn’t tell the difference between the spires and the mist which claimed them. I don’t know when the moment was that they slipped away forever: all I remember is realising that they were already gone.

And then the devils came.

We didn’t know what to make of the shadows which bobbed and weaved through the mist at first. Survivors, perhaps? We’d heard tales of those poor souls who touched the clouds and weren’t carried away. Their eyes would crack, their skin would harden and their lungs would fill with blood as the sea-plague took them, hour by hour. We’d see it more and more over the coming weeks, hear them begging for the mercy of death.

But on that first night, they weren’t survivors. What rose through the mist were creatures of shell and bone, hissing and chittering as they stalked from the darkness, their speed unnatural and impossible over such broken ground. We ran: it was all we could do. Turned and ran for the mountains, stumbling and staggering in the half-light with no care but for ourselves. I remember the moment where a man reached out for me, begged me to help. His leg was trapped, caught up in a tangle of roots and vines, his thrashings only serving to hold him faster. His face was shining with sweat, his eyes wide, his voice desperate, and I left him there, listened to his pleading as it grew fainter until it was ended by a single, horrible wail.

Afterward, I told myself that it was because I didn’t have time to save him; that I couldn’t risk touching someone who might be contaminated; that I was too caught up in panic to do anything but run. Lies, all. The truth is that I  _ wanted _ him to be caught. Wanted the monsters to reach him, to drag him screaming into the missing, to stop and butcher him where he stood for the simple reason that his death would put a few more seconds between my family and the devils.

The monsters made monsters of us in turn.

It was like that for months. Everyone from that night must have had a similar story, a shame which kept them from others as surely as their knowledge of those others’ shame fostered mistrust. What trust can be formed when all the world is sinners?

It nearly happened on the day the Cialdinis arrived, clad in rags and slick with the sweat of the desperate. None of us knew what to do at first as we gazed at one another, trying to decide whether to call out or raise weapons. In the end, they made the choice, calling out to us to beg for help. Their daughter, barely a week old and deathly ill. It could have been a trap, a trick, some perverse ploy to lower our guard, but I couldn’t take that chance. That night, for the first time in the four months since we had watched decency die, we put our trust in another family. We traded medicine and clean water for food and clothes, and so my children stayed warm and their baby lived.

In the morning, they stayed. It was a spot as good as any - high in the hills with a spring of fresh water, beside a meadow of fruit and the occasional errant goat. Weeks later, we came upon another group picking at that fruit, agreed to trade a little. The next pair were less friendly, but the guns of our new companions were enough to drive them away. After that we began to build the wall, little more than a fence in those days. One of our new companions said he knew another group not so far away who might have the tools we’d need, and offered to go to them.

Little by little, we grew. As the word spread, more people began to arrive, each bringing their own goods and skills. Sometimes they’d leave once they were done, happy to trade and keep moving, but most chose to stay, to make a go of things. With each new arrival, what was once but seven people trying to survive became a trading hub for those in the area, and that trading hub slowly became a community.

Sometimes I look around, and see what we’ve become. Over there, Paolo scowls over the walls, a rifle slung over his knees. To you he’d be nothing but a foul temper, all ruddy cheeks and wild eyes, but to me he’s the man who took my hand as I tended his wounds and swore he’d give his life to protect my family. By the stream, my children work hard in the afternoon sun to carry water where it is needed, already growing as tall and strong as their father. Behind the gate, baskets in hand, Amita and Leonardo bicker cheerfully as they prepare to risk their lives outside the walls to trade for the supplies we need.

By the standards of the world that was, this is a poor place. And yet, as I load magazines in the warmth of the sun, I can’t help but smile. I’d give my life for any of the people here, and I know they’d do the same for me. It’s not the shelters that makes this place what it is, though they’re far better than the world below. Nor is it the people, many of whom I barely know as more than neighbours, brought together by the desire to survive. It’s not even the safety, really. We’re under no illusions that this place is immune to attack.

No, looking around, my heart swelling with pride at what we’ve managed to build with just a few hundred ordinary people and some second-hand tools and material, I realise that I know the answer to my question.

What is home?

Home is what you’d die to defend.


	6. Husky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An outpost deals with an unwanted visitor

Tonight, I’m going to kill the dog.

The others think I’m crazy, of course. They haven’t believed me since it first started showing up a week ago. “How many dogs have you even seen in the last two years?” they asked. “What would a wild Siberian husky be doing in Brazil? Why would it run all the way over the runway every night, just to run away again?”

This morning, they even pulled the security footage to prove it. “Just watch it, Cardoso.” When colonel Silva spoke, it was with pity in his eyes and voice, and that made it even worse. “There are no dogs there. Maybe the next time the satellite is up, you should have a quick chat with the big doc, eh? Clear the air.”

Thanks, colonel, but I’ll pass. I need to talk to a shrink about as much as I need a note in my file saying I’ve talked to a shrink.

No, tonight I’m going to kill the dog. It’s personal now. He’s made me look like I’m losing it in front of the others - made me a liability. We all know how bad it is out there, outside New Jericho’s compounds. Even here, on the edge of the jungle with barely half an hour of satellite coverage a day, we get the briefings. Hear things on the radio. Hear  _ things _ on the radio.

I have a good thing going here. Two reheated meals a day, cleanish water, a bed with bugs smaller than my thumb. Failing a psych eval means handing in my gun, saying my goodbyes, maybe getting a spare revolver and bullet to take with me if I’m lucky and the others agree to ‘lose’ one from inventory. I’m not throwing away my life over some goddamn puppy.

The door to the watchtower opens and Montes steps in, making straight for the flask of water on the table. I don’t blame her. Even just sitting in here, keeping watch over the ground beyond the compound’s walls, I’m sweating. She gulps once, twice, three times, four, before I finally reach over and pull it away from her mouth. She wipes the back of her hand across her face, brushing the worst of the sweat from her scowling eyes as she grumbles at me.

“What gives, Cardoso? You know how hard it is, walking the perimeter wall in this heat.”

“I also know when the water is empty you have to go refill it. You really want to have to do all those stairs?”

Montes glances at the ground below and sighs. “Yeah, you’re right.” She flops down into the chair next to mine, unslinging the rifle from her shoulder and leaning it against the stained concrete wall of the tower. “I always hate night watch. Air’s too sticky, bugs are too big.”

She’s not wrong. Even by its usual standards tonight is unpleasant, like taking a bath in machine oil. And the bugs! They’re not so bad during the day, but in the evenings they swarm around the compound’s lights, a cloud of buzzing, biting, stinging insects which bothered us even before the repellent ran out, and which have only grown bolder in the year since.

I sigh, swatting away the fly which has found its way into the tower’s mesh. “I’m going to walk the rear, check the runway.”

Montes stares for a moment, shakes her head. “Still looking for that dog? You know there’s nothing back there but concrete and rocks.”

“You’ll see.”

“Whatever.” My watchmate sighs, reaches for a cigarette. “Anyone asks, I’ll say you’re getting water.”

“Thanks, Maria.” I take the flask with gratitude. Montes knows as well as anyone what it means if I have to speak to the doc.

The air out here is little better than inside. I walk to the first corner, stepping through both of the doors and out onto the rear wall, and curse as I catch sight of one of the external lights flickering. I don’t know whether it’s the heat, the humid air, or just a shitty batch, but we’ve been in this camp barely two years since the world ended, and already we’re running out of spares. It won’t be long before we have to start rationing out the lights - maybe we should be doing that already. At least there’s no bugs on this side, for once.

I slap the back of the light in irritation as I stand up, swatting away insects and swearing beneath my breath, and that’s when I see it. A flash of white fur, impossibly bright against the darkness, moving just for an instant on the far side of the compound’s airfield. I cut the power to the malfunctioning lamp and crouch behind the palisade, slowly unslinging my rifle and settling it atop the wall.

Another flash of white - there, moving behind those rocks. I smile as I flip open the scope, unlock the safety, and line up the crosshair. There’s nowhere to go, now. As soon as it moves out from behind those rocks, the husky is a trophy, and I’m no longer crazy.

I wait, and keep waiting.

My eye is getting sore, now. It must have been five or six minutes since that damn dog hid behind those rocks. I swear below my breath, wipe the sweat from my eye, and sight up again. Wait…

Something is moving, on the far side of the runway. No -  _ several _ somethings. Long, thin shapes, fuzzy and indistinct, reaching toward the compound like the shadows of the fingers of some great, looming beast. My heart is pounding in my chest, my breath catching in my throat, making it difficult to swallow the saliva which is building in my mouth. Without the hum of the lamp, devoid of the buzzing of insects, I should hear something, surely?

They’re still closing in - 200 metres, perhaps, as I finally sound the alarm. A simple, two-tone klaxon, blaring across a compound suddenly bathed in orange light.

The screaming begins.

No - screaming doesn’t do it justice. It’s a wail, a shriek, a high-pitched note which drowns out the noise of the siren and freezes the blood even in the heat of the night. As one, the shadows rise from the ground, writhing and flowing like water stirred to rage by rocks below, each now visible as a coiling, writhing beast of obsidian scales topped with an eyeless maw of jagged fangs the length of my forearm. I want to cover my ears, close my eyes to keep out the horror, but instead I force myself to pull the trigger, cycling the bolt with desperate speed as the first shot goes high and wide of the mark.

By the time Montes arrives, her assault rifle clattering as it streaks tracer fire into the dark shapes, they’ve already made it a hundred metres, more. They’re falling, at least, far faster than the shelled monsters I’ve fought before whenever they’re hit, but amidst the deafening scream of their approach, hitting them is easier said than done.

The wail is interrupted by the sound of a heavy shotgun as Silva appears at my side, instantly sending a shadow-beast to the ground in flames as he racks another incendiary shell into place. In the end, the firefight is one-sided, and doesn’t last long: denied their ambush, the attackers don’t last long against our fire, the final creature reduced to a heap of dark and tangled limbs twenty or thirty metres from the gate. I pull my eye from the scope, scan the darkness - nothing. To my right, Montes is clutching her cross, murmuring wordlessly to God, while Silva is already ordering the other to sweep the other walls. I practically jump as his hand clamps onto my shoulder, caught off guard by the action.

“You ever see something like that before?”

“No, sir.” I shake my head.

“We’re going to have to start patrolling this wall again, I never thought I’d say that.” He stops, offers a hand. “You did good, Cardoso. Guess we found that wolf of yours, eh?”

“I guess so.”

The colonel nods at me as he begins to thumb fresh shells into the tube. “My report will mention this next time we check in. Damn fine work,  _ sergeant _ Cardoso.”

I grin. “Thank you, sir.”

“No more than you deserve.” He smiles at me. “Can you hold down this wall while we check the others?”

“Of course, sir.”

As Silva turns away and walks into the other corner watchtower, I feel Montes tugging at my sleeve. “The runway…”

I have my rifle raised again in an instant, ready to fire. Down the scope, I see it at last - the husky, its perfect, white fur glowing in the moonlight as it stares directly at me. It’s the work of a moment to place the crosshair over its head, put my finger on the trigger…

The dog just stands there, wagging it tail as is stares right back, fearless. As I lower the rifle, I smile. I understand now.

“What is it, Paolo?” Maria’s voice is quiet, nervous even. I put a hand across her chest, gently pushing the gun away.

“A friend.”

I smile at the husky as it turns and pads away, vanishing behind a dip in the ground as silently as it appeared.


	7. Enchanted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small group of pilgrims descend into a cavern in search of enlightenment

The cavern stinks of mould and faith.

In truth, the journey feels more like a swim than a walk, so heavy and humid is the air which clings to us, as wet as the clothes now stuck to our skin. Between the dampness of each breath and the shimmering mist which sucks the light from the burning torches at two of my three companions’ shoulders, I can already feel the warm embrace of the ocean which awaits us.

You wouldn’t understand, of course.

Your lack of faith makes you blind.

It’s a feeling, more than anything, which guides me. Down here, the ocean swallows the light with ease, and those who depend on the light in their hands would find themselves lost amidst the labyrinthe even before their torches ran dry, just so surely as those who listen to the sirens’ call would stray away from the true path to their doom.

The man to my left hears her now, her singing entrancing, mournful. He was lost to us even before his first step into this sacred barrow. I don’t bother to turn to him as I feel him slow his pace, hear the longing in his voice.

“I think we’re going the wrong way.”

“What makes you think that?”

The second voice is nervous, uncertain. She won’t follow him when he leaves, for although she is not a believer she wishes she were, and so she will follow my faith in hopes of sharing it. Once, when I was lesser, baser, I would have considered her beautiful, perhaps even taken advantage of her need to believe. But now, even knowing her fate isn’t enough to spur me to pity.

The first hesitates, stops. He hears the call, I know this as clearly as if I saw it with my own, unmasked eyes. I don’t stop for courtesy as he falters, torn between knowing that he is about to fail, and the desire to embrace it. When he speaks, his voice is defeated, resigned, the murmur of a man already dead. “He doesn’t know where he’s going, he’s blindfolded, for pity’s sake! It’s this way, I’m sure.”

I don’t stop, and though my companions hesitate, ultimately they turn and begin to follow, abandoning the other to his fate. His name is already forgotten, useless now that I have seen him for the last time.

Down we descend, along rocks growing slicker with slime and algae. The siren calls recede as surely as the first’s panicked cries as he grows lost, no longer able to find his way outward or inward. Here, the caverns begin to widen, growing broader and taller. Oysters and anemones crowd the walls, the eyes of this place following the intruder’s flame so surely as any body tracks an invader.

When the first beasts begin to scuttle around us, shells and scales and teeth, I sense the second companion begin to falter and almost feel disappointment. I don’t need to remove the veil from my eyes to see her fate, for I have seen it already. Though I and the other fourth are to pass unharmed, the light in the third’s hand is a transgression which this place will not abide.

The slithering of this place’s inhabitants does nothing to bother me as they slide across my toes, finding no weakness in me or the fourth. The third is not so lucky; as we reach one bend, she screams at the brush of venomed sacs across her hands, sobbing and shrieking as her torch falls aside, extinguished in an instant amidst the stink of roasting shellfish. Ahead of us, glowing softly in the darkness, a single, yellow orb hangs from the wall, like the moon on a starless night. It’s too dark for the third to see us as she stumbles toward it in panic, trying to calm herself long enough to catch her breath and spot us.

Her cry is cut off as suddenly as it begins when the invisible jaws close upon her, and too late she learns that desire is no substitute for true belief.

Just two left now, I and the fourth. There’s no more risk of getting lost, for though we’re both blind beneath our masks, we follow the call of the salt in our blood. I know her thoughts as surely as she knows mine, for we both arrived wreathed in the garb of the visions. We both know that to enter this place is to be a worm hooked and lowered into the depths, powerless to do anything as we sink deeper and deeper.

But we are not bait.

We are an  _ offering _ .

And if the the ocean accepts that offering, it will bestow its gift in return.

As we enter the room and part ways, we say nothing. It’s not merely that we know the futility of the gesture, though to wish luck upon another when only one of us will leave this chamber is plainly self-defeating. No, it’s that down here, shapeless, eyeless things stalk the shadows. To make a sound is to gain their attention, and to gain their attention?

Well, even the faithless aren’t so blind they can’t see the answer to that.

My feet are silent as they touch the floor, padded with care and patience over the course of days to deaden my footfall in this place. I step slowly, knowing that to move quickly matters little when to make contact with one of the ancients is to bring instant death regardless of speed. All around, the chamber is silent, the air rich and thick and oppressive, a soup of musty smells and condensation. Comforting, to the children of the ocean, yet I resist the need to fill my lungs.

_ Ah _ .

I can’t tell which direction the sound comes from, the faintest scrap of fabric on stone. It doesn’t matter; it is enough. To her credit, the other makes no sound as she is consumed, her death a few moments of flesh and bone ripped and snapped. Sometimes, even faith is not enough, and I admire her courage in becoming a willing offering.

As I step into the final chamber, I reach up, remove the headband. Dark hair spills around my face as I let the hoodfall away, stepping into the glow without regret. Beneath another glowing light, a single creature oozes, a dark shell beneath a blood-red spike. The final test comes now, a simple act of faith. I raise my hand above the spike, prepare to plunge it down and be reborn with the gift of the Gods. To leave behind the chains of mortal flesh and join the ranks of the Enchanted.

Go, heathens. Cling to your hovels, run from the waves which rise higher each year. Hold on to your purity, your obsession with the world-that-was. In your arrogance you have forgotten the lessons of the past, that even kings could not command the tide to turn back.

You will fight, and you will fail, and you will die.

But the Disciples will rise anew.


	8. Frail

Society is only as strong as the people in it.

On that basis, you’d probably expect a society based around a retirement home to be pretty damned fragile. The youngest in our little commune is Jill, at the spry age of fifty-nine. Before all this started she was in the merchant navy, shunted off to a backwater like most others who made their living on the sea once we gave up on the coast. A woman at sea is rare, and a woman marine engineer even rarer, but she’s kept her shape well and can swing an axe as well as a wrench. With what’s in the pipes these days, the two overlap more than you’d think.

In the other direction, the oldest is Malcolm, who’s less than a year from his hundredth. We like to tell him that he doesn’t look a day over ninety, which is half true. The half comes into it because whenever he has a weapon in his hand, he moves like he’s thirty and aims like he’s been shooting for two centuries. To watch him at rest, dozing beneath that scratchy old tartan on his favourite evening chair, you’d never suspect that he’d done two dozen tours in the SAS and can snap a lobster’s head clean off its neck bare-handed.

It’s true, we can’t move as fast as the youngsters. Maybe we’re short a few eardrums and hips here and there. It doesn’t matter one bit. Running slowly doesn’t matter when you’re holding your ground, and we had nothing left to live for out there, even before there was nothing out there.

So yeah, a society is as strong as the people in it. And a people who laugh at death as he knocks, overdue, make for a society as stubborn as it is strong.

Malcolm hands me a cigarette, grinning through blackened gums and his single, ‘lucky’ tooth as we stare out over the courtyard below. “Shit on your mind, Trish?”

I take the cigarette and puff once before handing it back. “Just thinking.”

He reclines, takes a draw. The blackened end of the cigarette falls away, revealing life below as it begins to glow brighter. “Radio?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugs, tapping the cigarette against the side of the chair to get rid of the ash. “Just an old distress, probably from out at Clyde. The place’ll be crawling with lobsters, I’m guessing they chewed through a cable and shorted a circuit or something.”

“Still, sixty miles”

“Don’t be surprised.” He draws from the cigarette again, embers dancing on the edge of his chin. “Powerful shit, go a hundred or more. I ever tell you about the time we were on patrol outside-”

“The scud base, yeah, you’ve told me. And that’s not what I meant,” I reach out for the cigarette, enjoying the warmth and glad that I don’t have any taste buds left to ruin. “I was going to ask why he sounded like a yank.”

“It’s what we would have done. Much better to hear someone calling for help when it’s an American and not one of ours.” He smirks, holding out his hand for the cigarette. “Less likely that the bastards would hear and shell you for your trouble, too. I ever tell you about-”

“Yeah, yeah, you, Americans and friendly fire, that’s twenty stories there.”

“Twenty-four.”

I snort, shaking my head as I stare across the courtyard and toward the loch. “I don’t know, Mal. It didn’t sound pre-recorded.”

He sighs, sits forward in his chair. “Spit it out, Trish.”

I don’t answer straight away. Instead, I glance around - at the home we’ve built for ourselves here. Once, it was oppressive, gloomy, death’s waiting room - a place where people were left when the time came to be forgotten. Over the last year and a half, it’s become somewhere that I care about - a place of its own. We’re not here now because we’ve been forgotten, we’re here because it’s the one place left that’s worth remembering. I know that if I say the words, there’s a good chance I won’t see it again.

“I think we should investigate.”

Mal doesn’t reply for a few moments. He knows that I won’t ask him to come along - if only because I know that he’s going to volunteer. We have to go through the dance first, though.

“It could be a hundred miles if it’s not at Clyde. And if it is Clyde you’ll be arse-deep in lobsters before you can pull your fishnets up.”

I shake my head. “And someone else might already be that deep in them. You don’t fancy it, say so.”

He smirks, raises the cigarette again. “Well, I am in the middle of potty-training Jill, but I’m sure I can find someone else to take over. Count me in, Trish.”

I hold out my hand for the cigarette, glance at it as I exhale a moment later. Though it’s burned almost to the filter, there’s still enough left for one more good draw.


	9. Swing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A survivor achieves a lifelong goal as night closes in

I keep my eye on the ball as it drops toward me, bat tensed and ready in my hands. Around me, I can hear the roar of the park, feel the energy of the crowd as they wave in the stands, knowing that my mom and pop are up there somewhere, smiling at me. Once, I might have been blinded by the floodlights, but not today - no, today my eyes are as clear as my arm is true. I swing the bat with all my strength, eye never leaving the baseball until I feel the wood shudder in my arms, the shock racing through my flesh even faster than I hear the crack of the impact. I grin as I watch the ball soar away, further and higher than ever before: yes, that’s one for the stands. I drop the bat, bowing to each of the stands in turn, grinning through eyes wet with tears.

I’ve always wanted to do this, hit a home run in my home park.

Not that there’s really any point running.

The fantasy fades faster than my smile as I stare around the derelict stands, the concrete already veined with moss where it hasn’t been overgrown completely. Peeling boards rot around each level of the stands, each bearing the promise of luxuries long lost to seats long abandoned.

Now that they’re going to stay that way for long, once the sun finally slips beneath the horizon and those mighty floodlights fail to come to life.

Still, I decide, there are worse places to die. It’s no longer a question of  _ where _ I die, trapped on this field with nowhere to go but into the ravenous dark. Nor is it even a question of  _ when _ , since I know what’s going to happen as soon as the light fades.  _ How _ ? Well, I’m not sure of the specifics, but I’m sure it’s going to be painful. And while I don’t know which one it will be that finally strikes the killing blow, I can already see the shadows who are going to do it, flitting around the shadows pooling at the edge of the ground - though perhaps nowadays, it’s better to treat them as a  _ what _ , rather than a  _ who _ .

As for  _ why _ ?

Well, that one’s easy too. Desperation, poor decisions, poor decisions in desperation. We never planned to come so deep into the city. Nobody does anymore. If you’re smart, if you have any other choice, you’ll walk away and never look back.

Sadly, we were neither.

There were nine of us this morning, all certain of the plan and our roles and rules. We’d been putting it off for as long as we could - going through smaller hamlets and villages, scavenging what we could. It worked, for a while. But the truth is, if everyone has the same idea, eventually everything has been picked over. The world now’s nothing but skin and bones picked clean three times over and if you want food and medicine and proper tools, there ain’t nowhere safe to get them anymore.

The city has a way of sucking you in - we knew how far we’d scavenge, had the plan all set and ready. And yet within an hour we were deeper than we’d ever agreed, lost in a maze of streets which seemed to shift around us, a living labyrinth of concrete and asphalt. Suddenly, we were at a crossroads, staring in despair at signs weathered beyond hope, skyscrapers in all four directions and not a landmark in sight. There’d been no warning, no dark portents, no sense of foreboding; we were simply  _ lost _ .

Everyone knows the crabs, as sure as they know the mist which still sometimes swallows the cities. But sometimes, if you peer at the shadows lurking in the mist and the darkness, too tall and slender to be the crabs, you could almost mistake them for men. Until, of course, they move. Jerky, spasming, impossibly fast, impossibly flexible, sacks of bones which mimic movement unbound by the limit of joints or speed.

No man moves like that.

No living thing moves like that.

We didn’t realise we were dying at first. We waited at the exit of a building for the two at the rear to catch up, and they were simply  _ gone _ . No cries, no shrieks, no struggle; just gone. We waited fifteen minutes, called out loud enough to attract every secret eye in the city, and still nothing.

By the time we made it to the ballpark, there were only three of us left, and if we didn’t already know what was lurking in the shadows, none of us would have been able to say what had happened to the others. The hope was that we’d be able to get out onto the stands, get a view over the city from height and light, maybe find a way out. It didn’t really matter. Three of us walked in, and as soon as I arrived at the top, alone, I knew none of us would be walking out.

Still, there’s worse places to die. I have a lot of good memories of this place. Even after he got sick, pop brought us every week and we’d sit with hot dogs and popcorn up in the stands. He was one of the first to get it, before they knew what it was - Chronic Maritime Degenerative Bronchitis, they called it back then. He fought it until the very end and the day before he died, he made us wheel him out here to watch the last game. The team lost, of course. But he still squeezed my hand all the same and wheezed that he’d been glad to see the place one last time.

I smile as I watch the sun dip below the horizon, as the stands begin to fill with dark, fuzzy shapes, shifting and unnatural, indistinct even in the half-light. It must be nearly ten years since this place was last so full, back before they started shutting down big public places where disease could spread, and yet they pour from every corner, thousands upon thousand of dark and silent shapes, like ants pouring forth from cracks in the earth.

I smile as I heft the baseball bat again, raising it to my shoulder. A home run with nowhere to run, and no chance of victory.

As the first shadow man jerks toward me, I plant my feet and aim for the stands.

I do what dad wanted.

I go down swinging.


	10. Pattern

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Behind the lines of a losing battle, Doctor Schafer makes a surprising discovery.

There’s something here, I can tell.

The boss used to say that intelligence was the ability to make sense from nonsense - to find the pattern in an apparently random set of data. I used to do that for governments, back when there were still governments to do it for. Sift through hundreds, even thousands of reports, of pictures, of studies and testimonies and rumours that made no sense and had nothing to do with each other. That moment, that first flash of insight where I’d start to see a pattern somewhere in the data, always made me feel like the smartest man on earth.

Staring at the flickering computer screens, trying to ignore the wail of the siren and the dust which scatters from the ceiling with each of the heavy thuds that shakes the concrete of the bunker around me, I can’t help but grimace at how stupid I feel now.

Four years.

That’s how long I’ve been trying to find the pattern here. Gazing at satellite images of where the mist swells and recede, of where the enemy strikes, of autopsied creatures and combat reports, trying to put the pieces together. Lately, they’ve been attacking this area more and more - with greater numbers and force each time. At first, I thought it was a push toward the relay in the mountains, but they’ve seen no scouts there and in any case, the route of the attacks has veered away in recent months. Then, I thought it might be to do with supplies - cutting us off, one resource at a time until we’re all running out of resources, but even then they’ve been hitting our redundant bases as much as those which produce rarer resources. I even tried cross-referencing the path with known mutation and cult activity - but even that didn’t give any answers.

They enemy isn’t random, and it isn’t mindless. I know how the soldiers talk, but it’s their job to shoot and my job to think, and none of us should be in a hurry to trade those roles. The enemy knows how to scout, how to ambush, how to feign a retreat. It knows to starve us of food and fuel, to poison our water and to wound messily enough that treating survivors is never a sure process even as it eats into what medical supplies we have left.

I rub at my eyes to clear the dust, force myself to focus on the screen. The flickering signals the death of hope as much as the grid, the last chance we’re going to have to use these data banks. It’s like being trapped inside an enormous concrete drum, one which is being beaten with all the fury of a war-march, and I barely notice O’Connor as he staggers through the door and into the room behind me.

“Doctor Schafer!” He coughs as he speaks, propping a bloodied arm against the frame for support. “Doctor Schafer, we have to go! They’re in the tunnels now, we need to get to the evac point!”

I stare at the screen, scrolling through the static-washed reports in equal parts rage and despair. A near-defenceless fuel dump ignored, five miles from a massacred garrison with no real value. A plague in the mountains which causes gangrene in women. An enormous totem of cartilage and scales nurtured in front of an old brewery.

_ Damn it, why can’t I see it? _

_ It’s there. _

_ I know it’s there! _

The itch confirms it, that furious scraping at the back of my skull which accompanies every moment of insight.

“Doctor, please!”

“Just hang on!” I snap without turning to look at him, desperately scrolling through mission reports. Pictures shake as the screen vibrates with each quake of the structure, the clatter of heavy gunfire all too loud, too close now that the door is open. The itch is building as I begin opening a new set of files, nagging as it torments me with the genius of the unconscious.

_ I’ve already worked this out, damn it! _

Fingers work at my temples as I stare at the two pictures before me now, one a satellite image of a great and gloomy shadow off the coast of the island, the other an old transcription of a temple relief allegedly found beneath the ice of Antarctica. A mission report is open below, the standard dry bravado about bullets and death and blood, something about a big cluster of barnacles in the observatory, a short description of a new strain with fingers like leeches that was hiding in the radio room…

_ Click. _

And there it is.

The lights flicker and dim again, and this time one of the screens doesn’t come back on. I’m rooted in place, unable to move, frozen to the spot by the revelation. Could it be? SUrey not, and yet…

I pull them up. More documents, more images, frenzied and insensate to O’Connor’s alarm as he panics in the doorway. It’s impossible, no - yet it’s there. So subtle, so cunning, so damned, damned clever - yet for all it’s taken me too long to see it, I see it now. Intelligence is the ability to find patterns in random data. But genius is to hide it there. And these aliens have a true genius about them, to have hidden the pattern so well and for so long.

The second screen flickers and fails as the room is plunged into darkness, now lit only by the dying green glow of the third and final screen. Text races as I save every file I can, turning to stare with renewed hope at the drive buzzing with such anger as it writes to the disc.

With one last, heavy roar, the power finally dies, the bunker lurching beneath my feet as I’m thrown to the ground. I stagger to my feet, fall again, scrape my way across the raw concrete to the powerless computer tower, ignoring the fresh stink of seaweed and sewage which floods the room. Both hands begin bleeding in the moments it takes me to smash the yellowing plastic off the front of the drive, clawing out the disc within.

“Doctor Schafer!”

O’Connor grips my shoulder, turning me to face him, the torch in his hand flashing and flickering as he struggles to keep his footing. I don’t look at his as I raise the disc, brandish it with excitement.

“This is it! This is it!”

“What are you talking about, we have to go!”

“I know what they’re doing!” I’m manic, grinning with joy despite the danger of the collapsing base. “I know what they’re doing! Smart fish, not smart enough, don’t you see, it was there all along, right under our noses, but now I can stop them!”

O’Connor stares at me for a moment, his face suddenly blank - clearly overwhelmed. “You can stop them? You’re sure?”

“Yes, yes! We must hurry at once, we-”

I barely feel the knife which slides up through my chest.

It’s a strange feeling, to know that you’ve died. It has happened; it can no more be turned back than the tide. Yet for a few moments more, I’m able to watch it, to feel the curious sensation of absent sensation. There’s no pain, no pressure, no flush of cold. It has simply… stopped.

I sink to me knees, feel liquid flowing down my chest, across my hands. When did I raise them? My wedding ring, such a precious thing, hidden beneath a bloody veneer. I raise my head while I still can, the torch darkening as surely as the room. There’s no anger, no hatred, no need to fight back, just a simple curiosity.

“Why?”

There’s a genuine sadness to his expression as he kneels before me, scrapes the disc away from the pool of blood. “I’m sorry, doctor. I wish you’d just run for evac. I always did like you.”

I’m having to speak carefully now, each word the labour of a corpse’s lungs. “This doesn’t change anything. I was the first, but I won’t be the last. They hid it well, but in time, anyone can see the pattern.”

He stares at me, slowly shakes his head. “No, doctor, you weren’t the first.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I’m so tired now, eyes dark, my balance fading. “There’ll be others. We’ll rise again.”

O’Connor sighs. “Sorry, doctor. Not this time.”

The disc snaps, and I pitch forward into emptiness.


	11. Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two soldiers search for a wounded comrade in the aftermath of a winter firefight.

If anything, the blood is getting thicker.

I scowl as I squat next to the thick red smear, as bright against the crisp white of the snow as strawberries atop fresh cream. My stomach twinges in sympathy at the comparison, the rumbling as loud as the cramping in my guts is painful. What I’d give to have a proper eton mess again! I didn’t enjoy my time in Britain much and I’m not looking forward to going back, but whatever else I could say about its people, they know how to make a proper dessert.

The thought is all the more appealing after almost half a decade of freeze-dried ration packs and caffeine tablets, especially since we’re now even rationing those. For all I struggle to keep them down, I know that once they’re gone, I’m going to start missing them. I’m really not looking forward to eating the enemy.

God, I miss fruit.

I force the thoughts of food from my head, trying to will my growling stomach into silence, and stand. After the violence of the fight, the near-silence of the dusky woods is oppressive, thick banks of snow deadening all sound and lending an eerie quality to the blizzard which continues to flutter down around us, already burying the chitinous bodies of our attackers. Even my partner’s footsteps are almost inaudible, the crunch of ice beneath her boots somehow distant and indistinct as she approaches.

“Captain Michaels,” her voice is a whisper, less substantial than the cloud of breath which accompanies it into the freezing air. “Dawes and Picket still reporting no movement and nothing on thermals back at the farmhouse.” She pauses a moment, shrugs her cradled rifle toward the bloody smear on the ground which leads further into the trees. “Is that where he went?”

“Your perception never fails to amaze, Magpie.” I can’t keep the irritation out of my voice, long past tired of her constant attempts to prove herself. “Now tell me what’s wrong with this picture.”

I don’t look at her, already knowing she’ll be pulling that face she makes whenever she wants you to know that she’s pretending not to be hurt by something you’ve said. It takes her a few moments of peering at the trail before she answers, a tone of genuine surprise in her words. “Wait… the blood’s getting thicker. Why would he be bleeding more as he went?”

“That, Magpie, is a very good question.” I thumb the flashlight on the side of my rifle’s barrel into life, sweep it over the forest to make sure there’s no glinting of shells or dark eyes waiting in ambush. Satisfied, I raise a finger to my ear, hold down the transmit button there, and begin to speak. “Picket, we may have one KIA here, we’re moving into the treeline to check now. May as well get your tools ready, over.”

“Copy, captain.” Picket’s voice is flecked with static, and I sigh, knowing that he’s forgotten to charge his batteries again. “Are you and Magpie alright, over?”

“We’re fine. I want thermals on our location until we’re back out, call us if you see movement. Michaels out.”

I let go of the headset, thumb my rifle to automatic, and raise it to my shoulder as I hunch forward and start to creep into the forest. A moment later, I see Magpie’s light blink into life as well, sweeping left to right as she covers the sides and occasionally flickering away fully as she checks the rear. I keep my own rifle trained carefully on the bloody path ahead as I follow it, helmet still hanging loosely at my side to keep my hearing clear.

In the end, it isn’t a long trail. I drop to one knee and raise a clenched fist into the air, cursing inwardly and furiously as Magpie doesn’t pay attention and ends up walking straight into my arm, whipping the barrel of her gun into the side of my head in panic.

I hold the gesture a moment longer than is necessary, just enough to master my anger, before I lower my hand to point at the outstretched leg by the tree ahead, already beginning to vanish beneath the snow. I wait for her to squat and acknowledge, before giving the order to circle around to the other side, and start moving toward the figure.

Though the tree’s branches have kept the worst of the snow away from its underside, where the dead leaves of autumn form a red and brown blanket which is almost enough to hide the expanding pool of dark blood around Abraham. As he raises his head in response to the light, I can see immediately that although his eyes are yellowing and sickly, his pupils aren’t dilating in response. He keeps one hand raised to his breast, feebly trying to keep pressure on the wound there, while the other lies slumped on the ground, next to his discarded weapon. I doubt he’d have enough strength left to pick it up, but I keep my own trained firmly on his forehead regardless.

Magpie isn’t so careful. As soon as she catches sight of Abraham she yelps in alarm, slinging her weapon across her shoulder and scrabbling for the first aid kit at her waist.

I sigh at her idiocy before I speak. “Don’t bother.”

Her faced is shocked as she turns toward me. “Why the hell not?”

“Because he’s one of them.”

Magpie continues to stare at me for a moment, before glancing back at the other, chewing her lip as she’s caught between her need to save him and the fear of disobeying the order. I turn back to Abraham, my voice as cool as the air as I spit the single word at him.

“Traitor.”

He coughs before he replies, dribbling dark, stinking liquid down down his chin and into the scraps of his beard. “Treason is a choice, cap. I didn’t choose for this to happen.”

“You chose to hide it.”

“Hide what?” Magpie’s voice is as panicked as it is confused now as she steps back from both of us, cradling her rifle once again. “Abraham, come on, you’re in shock…”

“Show her.” I know he’ll obey the order; even now, there’s enough of him left to do that much. He coughs again, bringing up more of the inky mucus and slime, before he slowly peels away his shirt and unstraps the punctured armour-vest. I can hear Magpie gasp as the mass below is revealed, accompanied by a stink every bit as foul as the corruption it’s been pumping into his blood.

It’s almost like a lamprey, though with half a dozen heads, all buried into the flesh of his ribcage save for one which twitches as it pours out a stream of bright red blood through a half-severed neck and an open maw.

“How long?”

“About a month. I thought it was just muscle fatigue at first, and by the time it broke the skin two weeks ago…”

“Two weeks. Two weeks you’ve known and put us all at risk. You’re every bit as disgusting as that thing.”

“I’m no traitor, cap.” His voice is a wheeze now, his skin already beginning to blacken and harden as the infestation realises that it can no longer hide. “What would you have done?”

“I’d have been more careful to start with.”

I stand up and step back, unholstering my heavy pistol with one hand as I reach for my full-face helmet with the other. Magpie is still staring at Abraham in horror as I push it down over my head, feeling the seals click into place, and I actually have to tell her to put her own back on before she snaps out of her reverie.

“I… captain, no, come on! There must be something we can do!”

“Helmet on.” I repeat the command once, raise the pistol. “You’ve got five seconds and if you get contaminated, you’re next.”

She stumbles back in alarm, fumbling for her helm immediately. Abraham sighs, leans back and closes his eyes. “It’s all right, Magpie. I’ve known this was coming.”

I give her an extra couple of seconds to finish suiting up, waiting for the click of her environmental seals, before I pull the trigger. Amidst the silence of the blizzard and the confined space of the trees, even through the padding of my suit the noise feels deafening, and even more so when I lower it a moment later and fire into the writhing creature in his abdomen.

I glance over my hands and weapon before I make the pistol safe and holster it, nodding with approval: at the very least, the calibre of the round means that most of the debris has gone through the exit wounds, with no obvious pieces of tainted flesh sticking to my armour. At my side, Magpie’s shoulder slump, and she shakes her head as she starts following the blood trail back toward the edge of the forest. I tap my wrist pad, open the channel to Picket once more, and speak calmly as I turn to follow her.

“Picket, one KIA confirmed, we’re on our way back now. Double up on rations tonight, we’ve got less mouths to feed.”


	12. Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amidst the ruins of Athens, a trio of survivors prepare to slay a monster

It’s not just the creature’s hide which puts me in mind of a dragon, though its scales are every bit as dark and hard as black, draconic iron. Nor is it the mist which constantly drifts from its snout, pouring through barbed and vicious teeth like smoke through the remains of a wrecked and burning engine. It’s not even the size, really, though at easily forty feet long and perhaps twice my height when it bothers to rise from its belly, it’s hard not to make the comparison.

No. What really puts me in mind is the stories.

Dragons are hoarders, you see. Find a dragon and you find a great stash of treasure - a pile of gold as deep as the seas, with rubies and diamonds the size of your fists and jewellery fit for the highest of kings.

The stories never explain how the dragon actually piled its treasure to begin with, of course. Claws the size of cars and fangs instead of thumbs can’t make it easy to carry all of that loot back to a lair, never mind stacking hundreds of thousands of gold coins into nice, convenient towers. What does a dragon even do with all of its gold, anyway? The story-tellers always pass it off as dragons being greedy and prideful, but why would collecting gold be a source of pride to a creature which has no use for it?

I know exactly why this dragon chose this spot, and how its treasure got there. There’s no great mystery to that, any more than there is to its treasure. The kings and grail-chasers in the stories may have loved their gold and their finery, but in a world where survival is its own quest, medicine is the greatest treasure of all.

I sigh, wriggling carefully back down the wet and broken tarmac. I’m only having this argument to delay what comes next.

The dragon’s lair is at the bottom of this crater, where the road and street have collapsed into a dark, damp pit of cobwebbed mist and moss-stained rubble. To my eyes, it doesn’t really look any different to an ordinary sinkhole, walls of rock punctured by broken pipes and the occasional fragment of masonry, with a gloomy pool of grey-brown liquid muck at its centre.

That’s where the dragon sits now, guarding its treasure - an overturned medical van bearing the symbol of the International Disease Relief Centre. Though its cabin has been torn open, dark stains on the shredded fabric of its mouldering seats the only remaining testament to the fate of its crew, the loading bay at its rear is mercifully, miraculously intact. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when I first caught sight of it - these things were literally proofed against bombs and riots, and for good reason - but to see one whose contents might still be pristine is to spy a tempting target. Moreso given that Konstantina’s fever is still worsening by the day.

She signals to me now, a single hand waved carefully from behind the broken storefront where we’ve set our position. I shimmy across the ground on my belly, ignoring the discomfort of stones and broken masonry digging into my skin, taking my time. The steady rain has long past soaked through my clothing, and beneath a steel-grey sky thick with dark clouds, there’s little risk of being seen provided I move slowly and stay low, even across open ground.

Though she hasn’t moved from the shelter of the storefront, Konstantina’s exposed skin is even wetter than mine by the time I crawl back through the broken half of the door. Her eyes are yellow and watery, almost sinking into sweat-slick, pale and mottled skin. Though when she speaks it’s more a croak than a whisper, and she’s obviously in pain, her tone is calm, her posture defiant.

“Still there?”

“Yeah, Tina, still there.”

“Good. Check Leon’s ready and then get in position.”

I nod, and begin shuffling through the store. Though I’m careful not to disturb the detritus which surrounds the floor, items knocked from shelves half a decade ago and picked over by who-knows how many scavengers since then, it’s more to avoid noise than damage, given anything of value would have been picked over long before now.

I reach the rear of the store and carefully raise my head to the window, staring over the sunken ruins of the street to the buildings on the far side. Through the rain, it takes me a few moments to catch sight of Leon’s woollen cap, the single white star on its front the only guide I have to his location. I slowly raise my hand, remove the dark glove, and wiggle my fingers: I have to repeat the motion again a few moments later, and I’m beginning to worry that something has happened before I see his own fingers rise and waggle once, his cap rising a little higher to reveal the outline of his glasses a moment later. I nod, and hold up three fingers, before ducking my head and gloving my hand again.

Konstantina is still sweating when I get back, looking tired as she stares into space. Though she does perk up as I crawl closer, I’m much closer than I’d like, and I can’t help but fret anew.

“Tina, how are you doing?”

“I’m fine, Yannis.” She shifts her position, wincing and stiffening, her breathing laboured and heavy. “Is Leon okay?”

“Yeah. We’re both ready.” I try not to let my resentment creep into the words. I’ve loved Konstantina since long before she and Leon met, and the day she said yes to him was a knife in my guts. For the end of the world to throw us together again…

I must have done a crappy job keeping my voice even, because she sighs. “And you, Yannis. I hope you’re okay too.”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“And you’ll do fine.” She shifts again, gritting her teeth as her aching muscles protest at the effort of rolling onto her belly. “We drew straws, you got the crap one. And neither of you would have let volunteer. Even if I were capable of doing it.”

“I’m fucking fine, alright?” The words are bitter, regretted even before the final syllable leaves my mouth. “I’m sorry. I just…”

“Don’t. I don’t have the energy to fight this. Yell at me all you want when I’ve got something to keep me from dying.”

“Okay. I’m sorry, Tina.”

“It’s fine. Besides, if you fuck this up we all die, so if you think about it like that your straw wasn’t really all that much shorter.”

I can’t help but smile, resigned to the insanity of the situation. “Good luck, Tina.”

“You too, Yannis.”

I exhale, and crawl back outside.

In the two or three minutes since I went in, the rain has strengthened, clattering down just a little more violently than before. I don’t mind, really - it’s not like I can get much colder, and the conditions give me just a little more cover as I crawl back to the lip of the crater. The dragon is still there, sulkily guarding its hoard, and I silently count to fifty. It’s to steel myself and to give my hands and feet time to stop shaking as much as to give Konstantina time to get into position, and I linger a second or two longer before I raise a finger to draw a cross across my chest, and vault over the rim of the sinkhole.

“Hey, Smaug!” I’d intended the words to make me feel cocky, brave, but my voice breaks at the second and I stumble to my knees almost immediately. Ahead of me, the dragon rises to its knees, far too fast for a creature of its size, head already whipping to face me from within a hood of pincers. A thick, dark slime begins drooling between its fangs as it hisses - a sound as loud as any dragon’s roar, but whose vibrations seem to slither rather than shake.

I change my plan immediately, already stumbling toward the sloped edge which between Tina and Leon’s buildings, all thought of getting to ground level first abandoned. Behind me, the creature is fast - impossibly so. What was perhaps a thirty-metre head-start is already less than half that as I cry out in panic, barbed shards of broken buildings cutting into the flesh of my hands and knees and shins as I scrabble for the exit.

I run.

I run faster than I’ve ever known I could. The agony of a hundred scratches is lost in a haze of panic, of the need to  _ move _ . The pool of water in the middle of the street suddenly seems as vast as any ocean, and I make the mistake of glancing over my shoulder. I’ve been running perhaps ten or twelve seconds now, and the gap has vanished - the dragon is already upon my, rearing to strike, and it’s only as I fail to spot a rock in my panic that I stumble forward, the lack of intention the only thing that keeps the monster’s claw from carving straight through me.

I hit the water, breath it in - it’s too deep, far too deep. I flail in desperation, trying to find purchase, in almost to my waist as I scrabble with arms and legs and hands and feet to propel myself forward.

It’s no impediment to the creature, which simply strides straight in. I scream in terror as a claw rises to strike, the sound nothing compared to the agony of a moment later as the appendage plunges straight through my shoulder. At once, the pain rushes back - of a hundred stinging cuts across my skin, of a hole as wide as of my forearm ripped straight through my chest, of ribes snapped like grass under the force of the impact. It gets worse: a moment later, I find myself suspended in the air, my right arm hanging uselessly as my whole body flares in white-hot agony. I start vomiting halfway through my screaming, coating my chest and left arm as it beats furious against the spike, choke on the vomit a moment later as it enters my still-screaming throat.

Being thrown to the ground again is almost a relief, even as I feel my elbows and knees shatter under the impact. I roll to the side, continue puking, stinging tears streaming down my face as I raise what’s left of my arm to thump at the sodden ground before me, trying to put some distance between myself and the creature. I barely register the ground beneath me is solid, that I’ve been thrown down on the far side of the pool. 

Until it starts screaming, too.

I roll over, almost blacking out from the pain of snapped bones crunching together, to see the dragon rearing, the surface of the water aflame and dancing with sparks. Through the rain and the pain and the screaming of the dying dragon, I can barely hear the roar of the generators from within the buildings, can’t even see where the wires have wrapped around the creature’s legs beneath the water.

As the creature finally slumps down, the victim of a thousand volts of electricity, I fall back in turn. I barely register Leon and Tina’s approach, the sound of their steps somehow faint and muted, as quiet against the pounding of the rain as the pain is against the chill filling my body.

“Yannis, you did it, it’s dead! Just hold on!”

Her words are echoes, distant and indistinct. Is the sun breaking through the clouds up there? It’s getting brighter.

“Yannis, you’re going to be fine, it didn’t hit any of your organs. Damn it, Leon, morphine! I don’t care what you think, morphine, now!”

The sun finally gleams through the clouds, the whole world dimming against its beauty. I close my eyes and smile, the pain of my wounds and the screaming of my love fading into the rain.


End file.
